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#1 2022-07-30 20:55:49

Trogle
Member
Registered: 2022-04-27
Posts: 17

Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

Hi,
I've a fairly recently installed arch installation, but I was trying to diagnose a fault with a non-system critical hard drive, and turned off and rebooted. Unfortunately, it didn't come back up, I've just something that looks like
"GRUB _"

in white on  a black background, with a flashing underscore.

The OS is all on an SSD which has boot, root and swap. There are two further matching drives which are RAID'ed (1) for home.

The last two matching drives, one is a zfs pool I created and the other wasn't co-operating, hence the debugging via the remove the cable to find out which was which.

I've not rebooted since my last pacman -Syu, so I'm not sure if this is a module rebuild problem especially with ZFS.

I've tried using a usb stick to reinstall the grub using  grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg in case any of the drive letters had changed.
Thanks

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#2 2022-07-30 21:18:08

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,951

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

I'm not sure if this is a module rebuild problem especially with ZFS.

I've just something that looks like"GRUB _"

Do/Can you enter the GRUB OS selection menu?
You might have to re-run grub-install, nb. that "grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg" would have requried you to chroot into the installed system first.

not sure if this is a module rebuild problem especially with ZFS

Afaiu ZFS only concerns /home but not the root partition?

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#3 2022-07-30 21:27:37

Trogle
Member
Registered: 2022-04-27
Posts: 17

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

No, there seems to be no way to get into the grub selection menu; no response to any keyboard, except CAPS lock changes light on keyboard.

I mounted root and then boot inside that like so, and then used arch-chroot, following the instructions in the install guide.

mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/boot

ZFS isn't used on home or anything else. I'd only just made one pool earlier this week. I was wondering if the pacman update hadn't properly regenerated the initrd.

Thanks

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#4 2022-07-30 21:37:16

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,951

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

seth wrote:

You might have to re-run grub-install

This has nothing to do w/ the OS, the initramfs and unlikely your grub.cfg (grub would kick you into an interactive shell if the file was missing/bogus)

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#5 2022-07-30 21:47:06

Trogle
Member
Registered: 2022-04-27
Posts: 17

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

What do you recommend then, pull all the data cables on each of the drives that's not got root on? Make sure that the right drive is being booted?

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#6 2022-07-30 21:52:28

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,951

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

You should be able to select the boot device from the BIOS/UEFI/Soot select menu, but again

seth wrote:

You might have to re-run grub-install

There seems to be a grub installation on the device that's being booted, but it also seems to be a corrupted one.

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#7 2022-07-31 10:49:39

Trogle
Member
Registered: 2022-04-27
Posts: 17

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

Ok, I've already booted using a usb stick (which shows the majority of the hardware is OK and I could cleanly mount the drives), chrooted over and reinstalled grub, but that didn't work. I agree with you about the initrd.

Is there away I can reset the grub install?

Thanks

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#8 2022-07-31 12:58:37

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,951

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

the majority of the hardware is OK

The majority?

reinstalled grub, but that didn't work

Is there away I can reset the grub install?

How do you define "reinstalled grub"? Because re-installing the package won't cut it.
What exact commands did you run?

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#9 2022-08-01 20:04:40

Trogle
Member
Registered: 2022-04-27
Posts: 17

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

Yes, if I boot from a usb stick, I'm not going to be testing the boot hard drives, so I said majority.

I should have said I recreated the grub config file using
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

I think I'mgoing to go back and run
grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sdX

and see if that helps from a chroot, where sdX is the name of the ssd with the boot os on.

Thanks

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#10 2022-08-02 11:48:23

Trogle
Member
Registered: 2022-04-27
Posts: 17

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

Yes, needed the grub-install line as well; works fine now! Thanks for your help!

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#11 2022-08-02 12:07:52

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,951

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

cool
Please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

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#12 2022-08-02 12:14:43

Adriik
Member
From: Argentina
Registered: 2022-03-10
Posts: 128

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

Maybe I'm very dumb and I don't understand how processor code names works, but this caught my attention:

grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sdX

This is an Arch Linux 32 bits installation?


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#13 2022-08-02 12:27:51

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,951

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

Maybe, but not at all necessarily: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#Installation_2

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#14 2022-08-02 12:50:57

Adriik
Member
From: Argentina
Registered: 2022-03-10
Posts: 128

Re: Previously working installation won't boot past Grub,

My theory about if I'm dumb was correct.

My brain forgot about BIOS (I usually see only UEFI). I need more coffe and read more about this.


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Command cheatsheetCommand not found?
If I write something wrong in English, please correct me.

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